When you’re depressed, you don’t value your own time. What you value is: other people’s opinions about you.

Let’s say you want to take off of work and go horseback riding one day. Do you do it? No, because someone else might accuse you of being lazy. Or cruel to horses. Or bad with money.

Let’s say you want to invite some people over to your place. Do you do it? No, because you’re afraid that you don’t have enough to offer. They may not really want to come. Your house might be ugly. They might not enjoy it. Some might be brutally honest.

Let’s say that you want to change jobs. Do you do it? No, because someone else might criticize your choice. You might not get hired. You might get fired. They might go bankrupt. It might be worse than the last job.

In short, you’re living in fear.

You value the opinion of others. (You’re too worthless to deserve to pay attention to your own.) But you’re in an impossible position, because each person you’re trying to impress could have a different opinion of what you should be, do, or have.

When you’re as depressed as I was, you suffer through life. Life seems interminably long. You wish it was over.

You don’t value your time; you hate your time.

You walk a tightrope of not offending anybody, afraid to fall off.

Indeed … when people are offended, they can get nasty. They can fire you, hate you, attack you, sue you, embarrass you, beat you, turn friends against you … right?

If you’re trying not to offend anyone out of fear of repercussions, you’re living in a kind of prison and you feel helpless to get out.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you felt self-confident? If you knew you could do just about anything you wanted, and not have to worry so much?

That life is available to you, but when you’re deep in fear or depression, you can’t see it from where you are.

In fact, it might be just one area of life where you feel hopeless – you’ve got great relationships, but you can’t get your financial life together. You’ve got great health, but you’re incredibly disorganized. You’re doing great with money, but your relationships weigh you down.

The weird thing is that offensive people often do better than those of us who try so hard to please others!

That’s probably because they see nothing wrong in whatever they do. They expect to succeed. They assume that their work is better than everyone else’s. They self-promote shamelessly. If they have bad relationships, it’s always the other person’s fault. They make friends with the very nicest people, because only the very nicest would like someone like that. They have to pick really nice friends, because they could never be friends with someone as offensive as they are.

So from your perspective, it might look like all the nasty people get the best things in life.

You might say, “But I don’t want to be like that! I’d rather have the bad relationships, bad health, bad bank account! I’d rather die than model myself after that person.”

Right on. You don’t have to.

When you’re depressed, you can’t see the people who are successful and very nice. They’re out there, and they probably like you, but you won’t be able to connect with them for long. It will look like lack of time keeps you from them, or lack of money, or lack of connections, or lack of sophistication, or lack of: (fill in your own.)

But, trust me. It’s your depression. That’s the primary reason you can’t get anything you want. Work on that, and things will gradually turn around. They won’t turn around overnight, but your ability to handle whatever happens will steadily increase.

At least that’s how it’s happening for me.

When you ease your depression, you enjoy your life more. When you enjoy your life more, you enjoy your time more. When you enjoy your time more, you value your time more.

You won’t be as likely to squander it trying to make everyone else happy. But they’ll be happier if you are.

🙂

Anjelica

P.S. I wrote the book on how to release depression and start to feel good again. You can read it here: www.feelinggoodtoday.info